Nationalism and Political Illegitimacy

The analysis of nationalism has long been hampered by slipshod terminology. If anything, the situation has further deteriorated since 1939, when the Royal Institute of International Affairs prefaced a major study of nationalism with a warning ‘Note on the Use of Words’, whose opening sentence read: ‘Among other difficulties which impede the study of “nationalism”, that of language holds a leading place’.1 English-speaking societies are particularly prone to the careless interutilization of terms which in their pristine usage convey vastly different connotations. Thus, nation and state are commonly interutilized, and the term nation-state is regularly employed indiscriminately to refer both to uninational and multinational entities. As a result of this confusing interutilization of key terms, nationalism is used to connote two different concepts which are often in conflict with one another. At times it connotes identification with and loyalty to the nation in the sense of a human grouping which may or may not be essentially coterminous with a state (e.g., Croatian, Fleming, Scottish, or Ukrainian nationalism). More often it is used to connote identification with and loyalty to the ‘nation’ when the latter is used to indicate the state structure regardless of the national composition of the state’s population (e.g., American, Argentinian, Indian, or Filipino nationalism).2 In order to avoid the confusion surrounding two vitally different and often antagonistic loyalties, this writer has found it useful elsewhere to employ the term patriotism to refer to state loyalty, and ethnonationalism to refer to loyalty to the nation. While this vocabulary serves to distinguish between the two loyalties, it tells us little about the latter. It implies general agreement concerning the meaning of ethnic which, unfortunately, is not the case. As used today by most American sociologists,

[1]  Ivan S. Lubachko.  Belorussia: Under Soviet Rule, 1917–1957 , 2014 .

[2]  Aristotle,et al.  THE NICOMACHEAN ETHICS , 1990 .

[3]  A. Said,et al.  Ethnicity in an international context , 1978 .

[4]  P. Cappon,et al.  Ethnic Conflict in the Western World. , 1978 .

[5]  R. Terchek.  Conflict and Cleavage in Northern Ireland , 1977 .

[6]  I. Berlin,et al.  Maistre: Considerations on France , 1974 .

[7]  Walker Connor.  Myths of Hemispheric, Continental, Regional, and State Unity , 1969 .

[8]  Thomas Ford Hoult,et al.  Dictionary of modern sociology , 1969 .

[9]  by George A. Theodorson and Achilles G. Theodorson.  A modern dictionary of sociology , 1969 .

[10]  Walker Connor.  Self-Determination: The New Phase , 1967, World Politics.

[11]  G. Mitchell.  A Dictionary Of Sociology , 1967 .

[12]  Rudolph Heimanson.  Dictionary of Political Science and Law , 1967 .

[13]  Julius Gould,et al.  A dictionary of the social sciences , 1966 .

[14]  S. Lipset.  Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics , 1960 .

[15]  James Mark Baldwin,et al.  Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology , 1960, Nature.

[16]  F. Elliott.  A dictionary of politics , 1957 .

[17]  D. Easton,et al.  The Political System: An Inquiry into the State of Political Science. , 1953 .

[18]  H. P. Fairchild.  Dictionary of Sociology , 1944 .

[19]  C. G. Fenwick,et al.  Le Principe des Nationalites. , 1931 .

[20]  E. Steiner.  The Slovak Dilemma , 1973 .

[21]  G. Brinkley.  Khrushchev remembered: On the theory of Soviet statehood , 1973 .

[22]  J. Grooten,et al.  New encyclopedia of philosophy , 1972 .

[23]  W. Laqueur.  A dictionary of politics , 1971 .

[24]  Henry M. Christman.  Communism in action : a documentary history , 1969 .

[25]  M. Cranston,et al.  A glossary of political ideas , 1969 .

[26]  R. Olton,et al.  international relations dictionary , 1969 .

[27]  A. P. D'entrèves.  The notion of the state , 1967 .

[28]  M. Greenberg,et al.  The American Political Dictionary , 1967 .

[29]  Thomas F. Pettigrew,et al.  Ethnic stratification : a comparative approach , 1965 .

[30]  Robert A. Dahl,et al.  Modern Political Analysis , 1963 .

[31]  W. Ogburn,et al.  Dictionary of social science , 1959 .

[32]  K. Deutsch.  Nationalism and its alternatives , 1953 .

[33]  Ernest Renan,et al.  Qu'est-ce qu'une nation? , 1934 .

[34]  E. Barker.  National Character and the Factors in Its Formation , 1927 .

[35]  René Johannet.  Le principe des nationalités , 1923 .

[36]  G. Sorel.  Reflections on Violence , 1908 .

[37]  C. E. Merriam,et al.  History and functions of central labor unions . Colonial immigration laws : a study of the regulation of immigration by the English colonies in America . History of the theory of sovereignty since Rousseau , 1899 .

[38]  J. Mill.  Considerations on Representative Government , 1861 .